NYC Sculpture
Blog
Upward Glance
Tours, lectures
Essays
Art Consulting
Gifts, Greetings
Site Updates
Transcription
Profiles: Cont. Sculptors
FAQ
Links
Contact
About the Site
Press Releases
Most comprehensive guidebook in
print to outdoor sculpture in Manhattan
more info -
order
Annotated Art Essay 2
Why Do Detailed Analysis
of Paintings or
Sculpture?
Copyright © 2005 Dianne Durante
All rights reserved. May not be reproduced without written permission of
the author.
Ayn Rand said that the primary value of art is as "emotional fuel." "It gives [man] the experience of living in a world where things are as they ought to be. This experience is of crucial importance to him: it is his psychological life line” (“The Goal of My Writing,” in The Romantic Manifesto). I agree with this absolutely. Detailed analysis of a painting (which I call esthetic analysis) does not replace art as emotional fuel. Studying Bellini's St. Francis in Ecstasy won't give you the boost you get when you see a work whose subject and theme mesh with your sense of life and philosophy. Nevertheless, analysis can supplement art's function as emotional fuel. How?
First, it can give you the chance to spend more time with paintings you like. Before I started working out this method, I could spend fifteen minutes at most looking at a painting. That's probably true for most of people who aren't professional painters. With the method I’ve developed, I can spend an hour or more with a painting. When I decided to write an essay on Vermeer's Geographer (one of my favorite paintings), I spent four or five hours looking at the painting - not reading about Vermeer, or his style, or contemporary art techniques, or the seventeenth-century view of man, but looking at the painting to work out the theme and how all the elements contribute to it. So the first benefit of esthetic analysis is that it lets you spend much more time with paintings you already like.
The second is that analysis can give you the chance to see a great mind at work. After doing this sort of analysis, you can appreciate the mental discipline it takes to select a theme and present it in a clear, integrated manner. Admiration is a rare treat in today's culture, and I try never to pass up the chance for it.
The third benefit is more long-term. Doing esthetic analysis has epistemological benefits. Gary Hull talked about in his 1995 lecture "Art as Indispensable to Philosophy.” What follows is a very brief summary of his lecture.
Looking at art carefully teaches you not what to think but how to think: how to perceive essentials. When you study Holbein's Sir Thomas More (Annotated Art Essay #3) or Bellini's St Francis, you learn to look more carefully and to judge what is most important among a collection of details. Why? Because art is, by definition (Ayn Rand's definition) "a selective recreation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments."
The key word here is selective. Each detail is chosen by the artist and arranged in a certain way in order to convey his chosen theme. By studying what the artist has done - what is included and how it's arranged - you are learning to perceive in essentials as well. You're doing what Ayn Rand called "stylizing" or "conditioning" your consciousness. Dr. Peikoff put it this way in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (p. 324 pb):
What it [art] teaches . . . is a technique of directing one's awareness, directing it away from the inconsequential and toward the metaphysically essential. Art thereby clarifies a man's grasp of reality.
This improved ability to focus on essentials means better thinking on all levels and on all subjects, from art to quantum mechanics to the stock market.
In sum: why do esthetic analysis? First, to spend more time with paintings you love. Second, to see great minds at work. Third, to improve your ability both to see and to think. I hope you'll do it for all three reasons.
* * * *
One final point. Some of you may have misgivings about your qualifications for analyzing art. "I've had no art or art history courses. I can't do that." It's true that knowledge improves your ability to analyze. It helps to know some art history (so you can find comparative material), some Greek mythology, etc. But it's not crucial. The message is in the painting itself. In Bellini's St Francis, the crane, the donkey and the rabbit all have symbolic significance. But if you know that they're stupid animals, incapable of and hence completely "uncorrupted" by reason, then you know enough to analyze the painting.
Don't put off looking at art because you haven't heard or read much about it. If it gives you courage, in my nine years in college I had only one art history course – and that in Greek and Roman art. I recommend that you find a painting that appeals to or interests you and dive into it, learning as you go.
Further Information
-
Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto and The Art of Fiction
-
Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chapter 12.
-
Detailed analysis of Holbein's Sir Thomas More at the Frick (Annotated Art 3)
Related topics for future essays
Email comments@forgottendelights.com if you particularly want one of these earlier than the others.
-
Detailed analysis of Bellini's St. Francis in Ecstasy at the Frick
-
Questions (without answers) to help you look in detail at Vermeer’s Officer and Laughing Girl at the Frick
-
Analysis of a landscape
-
Analysis of a still-life
-
Analysis of a sculpture: Giambologna's Mercury
New York sculpture -
Essays -
Gifts, greetings & recommended
readings
About this site -
Contact -
Site updates -
Site map